The First Time
by AWiltedRoseSighs
Summary: Bedtime at the Potter house was synonymous to story time. What requests do the three children have tonight? Adventure? Love? Read to find out.


**I don't own Harry Potter. This is unbeta-d, so I apologize for any spelling errors. I'm sorry that I haven't been on much. *sigh* the woes of working 40+ hours a week. Anyways, I hope you enjoy.**

**The First Time**

Night time at the Potter house was a quiet affair. After dinner, the three children were sent upstairs to take their baths while their parents cleaned up after dinner. Lily was always the first one down. Her brothers Albus and James complained, and said that they didn't want to take their baths but once they got in, they didn't want to get out. After their baths, the Potter children sat around on various pieces of furniture in the living room, as their father and mother sat down. As soon as Harry sat down, Lily moved to curl up in his lap, James and Albus sat on the rug in front of the fire, both still chilly from their baths that had turned cold by the time they had gotten out. Harry looked between his children. "What kind of story would you guys like to hear tonight?"

All three of them started talking at once. Harry chuckled, while Ginny said what she always ended up having to say. You see, when they asked the kids what stories they wanted Albus never wanted to go first, he was the shyer, more nervous of the three. If you asked Lily first, then she would request story after story after story. So Ginny said, what had become her routine. "How about oldest to youngest again?"

James grinned at his parents. "Will you tell us about the marauders again?"

"Once upon a time, there were four friends, who went to a magical school together." Harry waved his wand to make the shapes of the marauders animal forms appear in the air. "Moony, the more Hermione of the bunch," this earned a light elbow in his side from his wife. "Moony had a secret. One night a month, Moony snuck out of the school, and escaped to a building just outside the grounds that was suspected to be haunted. You see, moony was a werewolf, and he didn't want his friends to know, because he was afraid that they'd be afraid of them. But what he didn't know, is that his friends were practicing something that would help him. One night, as per usual, Moony walked into the scary building, and transformed into a wolf. He was in the middle of tearing something apart when he heard a noise and he turned to see three animals sitting at the entrance. He was looking right at Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. The next day Moony was very upset at his friends. He yelled at them all, told them that they shouldn't endanger themselves. They told him that he was an idiot, that they didn't care about what he was one night a month. And so the Marauders were formed."

After James had his story, which was almost always about the marauders, and their (watered-down versions) adventures through Hogwarts. Normally James asked about when Prongs was finally able to get his girlfriend, but occasionally he wanted to hear about how the four of them became anamagi even when they became friends. Albus was next.

"Mommy what happened in your first year at Hogwarts?" Albus was the brainier of their three children: he would remember seemingly random information and then ask about it at story time. Last Saturday at the weekly dinner at the Burrow, George was teasing Percy about how he had tried to hide that he was dating Penelope Clearwater during Ginny's first year.

Ginny sighed, she had figured when George had mentioned it that Albie would bring it up. "When we were getting our books in Diagon Alley, somebody put a diary in with my other books."

"A diary?" he asked, a curious look on his face.

Ginny nodded. "I didn't find it until I got home and looked through my books. I was so excited to go to Hogwarts. I opened it and I wrote-

'_My name is Ginny Weasley, and I'm about to start my first year at Hogwarts.'_

"I'm excited too!" James said, it was only a couple of weeks until he started Hogwarts. Harry raised an eyebrow at him, and he blushed. "Sorry."

"Yes I was excited. But I was very nervous as well, because my words disappeared from the page as soon as I had written them." Ginny shuddered, and Harry wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. "And then other words appeared-

'_Hello Ginny, my name is Tom Riddle. How did you come across my diary?'_

"You see the diary was enchanted. Your grandpa had always told me never trust something when you can't see where it keeps it's brain. But I didn't think he meant a book. What harm could ever come from a book? I wrote in the diary for most of the year. But then, a couple weeks before Valentines day I tried to throw the book away-."

"Why?" Albus asked.

"Because students had started being petrified, and I couldn't remember anything about the days when it had happened. I was worried that maybe something in the diary was causing it. So I threw it away."

She turned to Harry, and he nodded. "When I found it, it was in a flooded bathroom." He said, making the kids turn to him. "When I saw that it hadn't been written in I was suspicious. Why would someone want to throw an empty diary away? That was the year that someone was opening the Chamber of Secrets. When we all went to bed that night, I took it out of my trunk and wrote down my name. When it responded and told me that the diary was made fifty years before, I asked it about the Chamber of Secrets. And it told me."

"What's the Chamber of Secrets?" James asked.

"You'll read about it in Hogwarts, A History." Harry told his oldest son, making him frown.

"What happened next?" Asked Albus, anxious to get back to his story.

"Well, whoever had thrown the diary away found out that I had it. So they took it back."

"I had written in the diary about how I liked Harry Potter, and I didn't want Tom to tell your dad about it, so when I found out that he had it, I had to get it back. More people got petrified. The chamber of secrets was said to be home to a monster. Eventually Tom told me to go down to the Chamber, and to wait for someone to find me. But after I got down there I went to sleep."

"Me and Uncle Ron went to get her back. Before Tom made her go down to the chamber, he had her write a message on the wall, saying what had happened. So we went down, and we saved her. We fought off Tom who tried to steal her soul," Albus leaned closer to his mother, gripping her shirt in a tight fist. "After we destroyed the diary, she woke up. But she came very close to losing her life."

All three of the children hugged Ginny, then seemed to glance to make sure that she was okay. The boys sat down again, reluctantly, and four of them turned to look at Lily, who had curled back up in her fathers lap. "When did you and mommy first realize that you loved each other?"

Harry looked up at his wife, and grinned. Ginny looked back at the kids. "I'll start this one." They turned to her expectantly, even James who often complained about 'mushy love stories'. "Growing up, I had heard a lot about Harry Potter-."

"Why?" Albus asked.

Harry and Ginny, when they had James, decided that they would try their absolute best to keep the press away from their family. They didn't want their children having to deal with the fact that their father was 'the boy-who-lived', the 'savior', the 'chosen one'. They had held a press conference when Ginny was about 8 months along, beseeching them to not bombard them or their family. "Because the first time Voldemort disappeared, it was trying to kill me." Harry said, drawing the childrens eyes. "He broke into my house when I was a toddler. He killed my dad, and he killed my mom. But when he killed her, she used magic to protect me. So, when Voldemort tried to kill me, it didn't work. His curse rebounded and struck him. People talked about it for a little while."

"Are you famous daddy?"

Harry tried very hard to hide a blush. "No, Lily-bug. I'm not famous."

"Anyways, obviously Uncle Ron and Daddy were friends. Before my first year, Uncles Ron, George," she paused, closing her eyes as she continued, "and Uncle Fred, all three of them went to get your daddy away from Privet Drive."

"When are we going to see Uncle Dudley again, or cousin Maria?"

"Well James will see Maria at Hogwarts. We might see them on the platform."

Suddenly James and Albus's voices couldn't be heard, and Lily was looking up at her parents. "I do believe that it's my turn to hear a story." Harry smiled at his daughter, and discreetly waved his hand, removing the 'accidental' silencing charm that she had placed on her brothers.

"Anyways, your mom came downstairs and saw that I was at the table. She squealed and ran out of the room. I didn't get more than a glance of her."

Ginny crossed her arms and huffed. "I did not squeal Mr. Potter."

Lily pulled on her mothers arm. "Story mom, I'm getting sleepy." She said, releasing a yawn.

Ginny shrugged at her daughter. "I knew that I loved him from the moment I saw him."

Harry looked at Ginny. "The first time that I _knew_ that I loved you was when You, me, Hermione, and Ron were in the common room. You were talking about how Romilda Vane I think, asked you if I had a tattoo on my chest. I mean, I thought that I loved you when I kissed you at that party. I'd driven myself starkers for weeks before that, just thinking about you. But when you were leaning against me, I knew. I just did." They gazed into each others eyes for a few moments, before looking down, and finding their children asleep. Ginny picked up Lily from Harry's lap, and Harry picked James and Albus off of the floor. Tucking them both into bed, Harry walked across the hall into his and Ginny's room.

"Did the boys stay asleep?" Ginny asked, unbuttoning her blouse.

Harry came up behind her, and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Yes, how about Lils?"

"She mumbled something in her sleep. But yes." Ginny dropped her shirt into the hamper, her pants following soon after, leaving her standing in only her tank top and underwear.

"Why did we stop at three kids?"

"Because you were still head Auror, and we thought it would be less dangerous."

Harry had a gleam in his eye as he looked at her. "Why don't we try for another? Yeah?"

She smiled at him, and nodded. "Yes."

**So, what did you think? I had Harry tell them that he wasn't famous, because in the EWE, the kids asked what everybody was staring at, so I just wanted to delve into that.  
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